This presentation was made by Kent Holsinger at a public forum on the impact of recent developments in scholarly publishing. The event explored the newly passed NIH public access mandate which became law in December 2007. In his presentation, Kent Holsinger tries to balance what he sees as the pros and cons. In the end, he favors OA ("Open access is a friend who deserves our help and support"). Holsinger is professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, past president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and a member of the Board of Directors for BioOne.

Deirdre Furlong, European Commission, Research Directorate-General Science, Economy and Society Directorate Governance and Ethics Unit, presented this presentation at the APE 2008 Quality and Publishing conference in Berlin. In his presentation, he discusses scientific publishing in the digital age and the European Commission initiatives.

This presentation by Ray L. Frost, Leader Inorganic Materials Research Programme, looks at Open Access Repository as a tool for student learning. Also, he discusses how researchers can benefit from open access.

In this presentation, Leanne Harvey talks about the future of the accessibility framework and research assessment. According to him, the accessibility framework is about ensuring that publicly funded research is accessible to the public, by government and by business.

Digital repositories are usually considered to mean a place where one deposits (hence repository) born-digital objects such as peer reviewed research manuscripts for the purpose of providing open access. In his presentation, Danny Kingsley says that most institutional repositories exist to serve institutional and funding bodies.